Free Fishbone's Song by Gary Paulsen Page A

’shine, Fishbone said, and he was happy. Or sleeping. Or just quiet dead.
    Beer was different, came on slower. Gave a man time to think on being crazy, mean, lead to fights. Led to stupid.
    Something the army never understood, Fishbone said. Had all these men in tents on the ground mixed in with animals in this refuge with a lot of free time.
    Brought in beer for them.
    Cases of beer in brown cans. Free beer. Just no way, he said, any good could come from it.
    So one afternoon, they were sitting by their tents, getting wetter and wetter on beer, when one of them pointed at a big bull buffalo standing not so far away, covered with dust and flies in the hot afternoon sun. He said that way back, before they had horses, the Native Americans would sneak up on a buffalo on foot and push a sharp stick into it and kill it for food. Either a spear, or an arrow from a bow. Still. A sharp stick.
    Well.
    Beer being free and what it was, sitting in crates of army-issue olive-drab cans with the word BEER written on the side of each can. Like you wouldn’t know what they were if they hadn’t spelled it out. And soldiers being bored and what they were, what Fishbone called the worst part of a know-it-all or thought they were, especially when they weredrinking beer, nothing good could come of it. Too slow a drink to end fast, too tough a drink to end good . . .
    Somebody, nobody quite remembered who, decided it would be a good idea to sharpen a stick, stagger drunkenly over to the buffalo, and try to push the stick into his side. Like the natives did, or the soldiers thought they did, before they had horses. Big old bull. Fishbone said it probably weighed just under a ton. Close on to two thousand pounds. Bull standing there, covered with dust and dirt and flies. Fishbone said he was amazed along with everybody else that the buffalo just stood there while the soldier walked up beside him. Hardly even looked at him.
    Stopped there, the soldier, turned around and looked at the rest of them, and they waved him on. Drunk, all of them, drunk as lords, Fishbone said, they waved him on and he nodded, turned slowly, and jabbed the stick into the buffalo’s side.
    Or tried to.
    Fishbone said he’d never seen anything move so fast. Faster than a striking snake, faster than a cat rolling onto his feet when he’s dropped to the ground. Fast as lightning. Fast. The bull wheeled in place, just a blur, and went to hook a horn in the soldier’s belly. Something made the soldier suck his stomach in, without thinking, and the hooking horn missed his gut—would have pulled it all out of him, Fishbone said, like fifteen feet of worms—and instead caught the belt. Heavy canvas ammo belt, part of his uniform, strong as iron. It wasn’t about to break, and the horn twisted into it and locked it in place.
    The bull took off at a dead run, slamming the soldier back and forth and up and down into the ground until he didn’t look like a person anymore. Like a rag, Fishbone said. Shaking rag of loose meat and broken bones and blood and torn pieces of uniform. Just rags.
    Hundred and fifty, two hundred yards the belt held, and the soldier slammed back and forth, up and down and finally shook loose. Laid there like old dirt, mucked with blood. Looked dead. The bull went back to just standing, in the dust and heat and flies. Wasn’t even breathing hard.
    But the soldier didn’t die. They called for medics and three of them came with an ambulance and took him away, and Fishbone said he lived. Kept him in the hospital for months with pulleys and ropes and plaster casts holding everything together, and Fishbone said his brain quit working right. Went so sideways that they took him out of the army, which wasn’t so bad because most of the men in that class got killed or frozen or shot some like Fishbone when they got sent to Korea.
    Didn’t know his own name.
    Fishbone said he couldn’t remember his own